GluttonyReaper

For future reference, this is isn't quite true - as far as I can tell, the game checks every frame if each craft is inside a planet or not, and decides whether to treat it as "crashed" based on that. To get a craft to phase through a planet, it needs to be moving fast enough that it's outside the planet on one frame, then travels far enough along its orbit that it goes all the way through and out again before the next frame. This is usually done by whacking up the timewarp all the way when on a collision course (easiest done in the tracking station to get around the usual limits), and actually works even if you're directly looking at it.

Honestly I wonder what KSP2 could have been if it was handed to a team with less familiarity (or perhaps just much less attachment) with KSP1. Other than proper orbital mechanics, a few art details, and the Kerbals themselves... there isn't really any mechanics from KSP1 that couldn't have been tossed away, replaced, or in many cases just added where it was very lacking. Unfortunately a lot of the choices made for KSP2 seemed to have purely been made on the basis of "well that's how KSP1 did it" - e.g. I'm not convinced there was ever any consideration for whether the science system (or some variation thereof) was actually the best choice for a cohesive game. Perhaps the planned features that were never finished could have been different, but things didn't really get far enough to present anything that I think was "surprising". Tangentially, it's neat to imagine how KSP could have turned out if it had stuck to its more cartoonish roots rather than getting swept up in the realism chase. Think of it - setting up a resource networks to harvest rocket fuel from Eve's oceans to fuel your motherships that you've constructed from Dunanian ores...

It's been a while since I watched it so I might be misremembering: I think the ShadowZone version of events also alleges that the KSP2 devs had the KSP1 code base, but were struggling to untangle it without any input from anyone who worked on said code. If that's true (and that's a big if), it would also make sense that a lot of KSP2 code had to be more or less written from scratch regardless, especially post-repitching (Plus there's the added complication that KSP1 kept updating even after KSP2 was supposed to have started development). Personally, I'd always assumed that the similarities between KSP1 & 2's behaviour (at least at a user level) were a result of A) intentional choices to recreate a lot KSP1's quirks in KSP2, and B) a kind of convergent evolution - both games seem to have been built by non-physics-experts effectively independently, so it makes sense that they would run into the same issues if they were trying the same methods.

Or Xenon engines, if you can spare the weight

Anything with a big ring always looks cool, and can be an interesting challenge to actually launch into space. Bonus points if you can get it to spin.

I've always imagined something akin to speed-running leagues to be potentially workable for KSP - something like "how fast can you go from an empty VAB to landed on the Mun in real time" while under competitive pressure could be fun.

Ah, that brings back memories. Pruning parts out of mods manually, avoiding scene changes, running the game in OpenGL... anything to avoid that dreaded 3.5 GB limit. I'm glad things aren't still that bad, at least.

Huh. That is weird... the Mk1-2 in particular was part of the first batch of (rocket) revamp parts, and looking at the changelog they were apparently intended to be deprecated at some point. I wonder if any of the other parts replaced in that update (the old decouplers, fuel tanks, etc.) survived?

Yeah that's the old Twitch! It got a replaced a while back... and looking at the wiki, it seems like they adjusted the stats as well at the same time. More than likely it's still there for backwards compatibility reasons - anything that was changed post 1.0 that was substantial enough to warrant a whole new part rather than just a reskin has the old version still around so you can still load old saves with those in use without issues. The same is true of the old Mk1-2 command pod and probably a few others. Obviously you can't normally see them... but I think they've just been removed from the default categories. When you use the filters, they filter through all parts, new and old.

I like to think they enjoy eating, but they don't have to. Hence why they get grouchy on long trips without snacks...

Rocketry is unnatural, an abomination. Space? We shouldn't even be flying, let alone leaving the atmosphere in some kind of "capsule". Kerbals were meant to frolic in the green grass around the KSC, not in Mun dust - Rockomax and Kerbodyne have taken us for absolute fools...

I believe this no longer works - the relevant button has been non-existent since KSP was migrated from the original Squad website to the Private Division one.

Fun fact - you can also use the re-root tool on those floating sub-assemblies if you decide, for whatever reason, you want to attach in a different way. Good, eh?

See the "Maximum Delta-V" section of this page of the wiki: https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Cheat_sheet There are theoretical maximums for a single stage, shown in that table for a variety of engines - as also explained, this makes some assumptions (negligible engine mass, no payload) that mean you'll never actually hit those maximums, but you definitely can't exceed them without staging. Jet engines/wings are much tricker to account for, but ultimately they can only give you a limited amount of dV due to lowering thrust at high velocities. The fastest you can theoretically get is 2100m/s with the RAPIER engine, again according to the wiki, which puts you ~200m/s shy of orbital velocity. So in theory, and almost certainly theory alone, the highest amount of dV after achieving Kerbin orbit you can get in a single stage is 56900m/s, using RAPIERs to ascend and then just pushing yourself into orbit with Xenon engines. But again, in practice, you aren't getting anywhere near that.

My immediate thought is: how you compressing the air enough to get any significant thrust? You want a light bone structure to store your air (more akin to a bird's than a human's) otherwise you're going to struggle to get off the ground: the human skull is a roughly spherical bone 'tank' around 5kg, which is pretty hefty, and I'm not sure even that's enough to store sufficient air for a reasonably 30 second burst. Another option could be to compress the air just before release - i.e. something akin to sneezing, so instead of a continuous thrust you're doing much shorter bursts. This would get the weight down, but I think you'd still need some expansive wing structure to allow for gliding whilst your 'tanks' are being refilled.